I have often wondered why there wasn't a flood of Android portable media players - now the WSJ Reports: "With the move, Samsung will round out a series of Galaxy-named gadgets that matches product for product with Apple Inc.'s line of iPods, iPad and iPhone. Samsung will have the Galaxy Player, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy smartphone. All use a variation of Google Inc.'s Android operating system and work with apps developed for it."

Alright, but is there a sufficient number of people in this situation for it being worth implementing AAC on the manufacturer's side ?

By default iTunes is setup to rip and encode CD's in AAC hence even if many customers aren't end users of the iTunes store they've most likely ripped their music in AAC by virtue of the default setting. I know my sister who pretty much represents Jane Sixpack that simply sticks with the defaults.

I mean, Vorbis costs them only development time and it's already too much. As you said yourself, AAC costs even more development time, and as a bonus caveat you've got to pay for it.

But they're happy to license WMA/WMV which is dead? seems to be crazy to reject AAC in favour of supporting another format that next to no one uses.

If I'm not misunderstood, most people who own lots of AAC files are iTunes Store users, meaning the part of iPod customers which would be the hardest to convince of switching to another media player.

As mentioned above - its all about the defaults and how most end users don't stray from them.

But they're happy to license WMA/WMV which is dead? seems to be crazy to reject AAC in favour of supporting another format that next to no one uses.

I globally agree with your post, but I think I can help you to understand that part. The false postulate here is when you suppose that WMx is dead.

Most of the desktop computing world runs Windows. And Windows includes Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker (well, Movie Maker is not installed by default but one click away now). As you said yourself, unexperienced users tend to stick with the defaults out of fear of "breaking something". Let's put all this data together.

A significant part of Windows users use Windows Media player and Windows Movie Maker, which both produce WMA and WMV as a default setting. Moreover, for a long time, it was the sole universally available DRMed format, and I can't believe you didn't get big content's help somehow when choosing to support their online music sales. Putting this all together, supporting WMA/WMV was the most logical thing to do.